QR codes have become the star player on the digital payments stage in China and throughout Southeast Asia. Consumers and businesses are wholeheartedly embracing mobile wallets powered by QR codes as the best way to pay, pretty much no matter where they are – or who they are. In fact, QR tech is so ingrained […]

The founding principle of every relationship between an ISO and a merchant is simple: The former will always be there to support the latter. A key component of this partnership is a POS solution with great service, intuitive design, and trackable insights. With this tool in hand, your merchants will be on the road to growing their […]

Cash registers have a certain nostalgia about them. They can remind us of a family business we grew up with, or perhaps our favorite general store. Point-of-sale (POS) devices, on the other hand, reflect the high-tech world in which we live. They combine the functionality of a cash register with modern technology and computing. You […]

There is a movement afoot among the big players in the QSR industry. The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with pre-pandemic trends, is causing the industry to rethink the brick and mortar restaurant and how they divvy up the space in those restaurants. A recent article in Forbes, Burger King Unveils A New Restaurant Design To Meet Consumer Habits […]

Don’t miss another episode of Truth In Data! Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s report – U.S. Small Businesses are Reeling as a Result of COVID-19 Small Business Payment Methods Are Changing: Business credit cards are still the dominant transaction type (56%), but a host of transaction types are gaining popularity. Small businesses’ […]

According to data from our 2019 research report Lost in Transaction: Gen Z expectations at the checkout, younger earners aged 16-24 are mobile natives that are embracing frictionless payments more than other demographics, making them more likely to want to make purchases online using their smartphones. As more young consumers enter the workforce, merchants looking to improve […]

This research report provides analysis and insight on the current state of the U.S. payments gateway market, supported by e-commerce sales data forecast. Highlights of this research report include: How gateways have become an essential payments vendor category Market data forecast for retail and travel e-commerce Gateways that compete in the U.S. market Contrasting paths […]

How Merchants Can keep New Online Customers After COVID-19

These new target customers present a huge opportunity for online businesses to move forward. But to convert these consumers from shopping online out of short-term necessity into long-term customers that genuinely prefer to shop online, businesses will have to address the concerns these consumers have raised.

Concerns about security are critical
To better understand these issues, we asked consumers about their current attitudes to online spending. Consumers’ beliefs that their financial data was at risk and as a result, they might be victims of criminal activity when shopping online were the key takeaways from our research.

Almost half (48%) of all consumers said that they did not feel comfortable entering their financial details online to make a payment, especially when they did not have any experience buying from the business previously. And this isn’t a decreasing problem for merchants. The same percentage (48%) of consumers said that they were more concerned about being a victim of fraud now than they were this time last year.
68% of consumers said they were more likely to shop with an online retailer that already had their financial details securely stored.
Only a third (34%) of consumers said that they held more trust in online payments than in-person payments. This is preventing many from embracing online shopping and digital services in anything other than essential circumstances. So for online retailers, addressing this hurdle is paramount to sustained long-term success capturing these potential new customers.

Diversifying the checkout is key
But what can online retailers and service providers do to give consumers greater peace of mind? Firstly, consumers appear overwhelmingly in favor of stricter security protocols when sharing their financial details. Three quarters (76%) of consumers said that they would like online checkout security to be tighter than it is currently, and 59% said that they feel anxious when they are not asked to provide any security information such as a password when making an online payment.
But more importantly, consumers seem much more comfortable with the security of alternative payment methods. Three quarters (75%) of consumers said that they preferred to use a digital wallet such as Skrill or NETELLER to make a payment to an unfamiliar merchant than share their card details. And 56% said they felt more comfortable purchasing online with a prepaid card where their financial details were not shared.
So for businesses, integrating these alternative payment methods into the checkout is an ideal solution. But doing so they can move away from being reliant on consumers being comfortable making card payments and capture some of the potential new business available due to the exposure eCommerce has received during COVID-19.

eCash solutions also have the potential to drive and capture new customers online and should be strongly considered by online businesses. 40% of consumers said that they would buy products online with cash if it was easy to do so, and 36% said that they would shop online more if they could make payments with cash. This is particularly relevant for businesses marketing to younger consumers; 56% of consumers aged 16-24 said that they would buy products online with cash if it was easy to do so, and 55% said they would spend more money online if they could do so with cash.

Next steps
Understanding how to keep new online customers will be a key issue for eCommerce and eCommerce businesses as we begin to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that evolving the checkout to make these potential customers more comfortable with online payments has a key role to play; online businesses that embrace alternative payments and give the customer more choice as to how to pay in a way they feel most secure will reap the benefits.

COVID-19 has made an identifiable impact on the way consumers are going about making payments. Some of these changes have been enforced by the physical challenges of coping with day-to-day life during the pandemic; while shops are closed and the move to contactless payments for in-store payments being the most obvious. COVID-19 might also have a psychological […]

It is unsurprising to discover that stay at home orders and social distancing is having a significant impact on consumers’ confidence in eCommerce. Overall, 42% of customers are shopping online much more because they cannot or will not buy in physical stores. A third of customers (33%) say that they are shopping online for specific […]